trips

What the trip actually cost, in one card

Nine days, fourteen expenses, six people, all square. The last thing a shared expense room owes you is a summary you would want to send to the group.

Start a split

Takes ten seconds. No email, no password, no download.

Splitting expenses ends badly even when it ends correctly. The last message in the group is usually somebody confirming a transfer, and then the whole thing evaporates — nobody ever finds out what the week cost, and the person who fronted the villa deposit in March never gets so much as an acknowledgement.

That is a strange place to stop, given the room has been counting the entire time.

What the recap is

Six things off the room, no typing

  • Total spentEverything the group put through the room, in the room's own currency.
  • How long it ranCalendar days from the first expense to the last, both ends included. Counted the same way wherever the person reading it is, so nobody's copy says nine days and somebody else's says ten.
  • Expenses and peopleThe shape of the trip in two numbers.
  • Payments recordedHow many settle-ups were logged getting from "we owe each other things" to zero.
  • Who fronted the mostThe person who put the most on their own card. Not who spent the most on themselves — who carried the group.
  • A settled stampOnly once everybody is genuinely square, and only when there was something to square in the first place. An empty room is not settled, it is empty.

You can look at it mid-trip too, marked as "so far". The share button is the part that waits.

Why it is an image and not a link

This is the design decision worth explaining, because "share your recap" would be much easier to build as a URL and it would be the wrong thing.

So what gets shared is a picture. The card is generated as an image, handed to your phone's normal share sheet, and it prints the product's domain rather than the room's address. Nothing that could open your room leaves the group — and the file it saves is named for the product, not the room, so the slug does not end up in a downloads folder or a screenshot of a file picker either.

The trade is honest: someone who sees the card cannot click into your trip. That is the point. If they want their own, the domain is on the card.

Getting to a recap worth sharing

Three habits that make the card true

  1. One room per trip, not per person

    Start it before the first booking, put the deposit in it, and let the flights and the villa land in the same place as the dinners. A room that starts on day two undercounts the trip.

  2. Add things as they happen

    Not from a bank statement afterwards. The day count comes off the expense dates, and the recap of a week reconstructed on the flight home says one day.

  3. Record the payments

    Settling is one tap on the person you paid. Miss it and the room never reaches zero, so the card never gets its stamp and nobody gets the moment.

Start the room before the trip does

One link in the group chat, everyone adds what they paid, and there is something to look at when you get home.

Start a split

Questions

What is on the recap?
The room's total spend, how many days it ran, how many expenses and people were in it, how many payments got recorded, and who fronted the most money. It carries a settled stamp once everybody is square.
Can I share the recap as a link?
No, and that is on purpose. A room's address is also its key — anyone who opens the recap URL can drop the last part of it and land in a ledger they can write to. So the recap is shared as an image instead.
When can I share it?
Once the room actually reaches zero. You can look at a recap of so far at any point during the trip, but the share button waits for settled.
Does the card show anyone's balance?
No. It shows what the group spent together and who fronted the most, not what any one person owes.